After all, facts are facts, and although we may quote one to another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, “Lies – damned lies – and statistics,” still there are some easy figures the simplest must understand, and the astutest cannot wriggle out of. – Leonard Courtney, speech, August 1895, New York, "To My Fellow-Disciples at

The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus. – Laplace, Théorie analytique des probabilités, 1820